After new National Record, Tejaswin Shankar says 8000 in decathlon is not an impossible number
Tejaswin Shankar had only a modest celebration after he set a new national record in the men’s decathlon last month. In the evening of July 27 th after he improved his own mark to 7866 points at the Wiesław Czapiewski Memorial at Nakło nad Notecią in Poland, Tejaswin, his wife Siddhi and a few friends out for a pint. “That’s a tradition after every decathlon meet. If not with the other decathletes, I’ll go with my team and have a beer,” he says.
After that though it was work as usual. There’s the usual challenge of transporting his 15 foot fiberglass poles through not always helpful airport officials back to India. “That’s something that keeps me very grounded,” he admits. In the days that have followed, Tejaswin has continued to stay busy – editing footage from the event for the final part of a video series on his Youtube channel in which he’s charted his progress towards the national record.
It says something about his mental clarity towards the pursuit of his goal and the confidence that he’d accomplish it that Tejaswin had titled the first video in the series posted two months ago – ‘8 weeks out to the national record’.
His journey to that mark has been systematic, even as he’s completed a few side quests – apart from shooting and editing his video series, he’s also found the time to do commentary for the Neeraj Chopra classic javelin throw competition in Bangalore last month.
A look at Tejaswin’s performance over the last couple of years suggests the record was due. Tejaswin had set the record for the first time two years ago when he scored 7666 points en route to the silver medal in the decathlon at the Hangzhou Asian Games.
READ | Tejaswin Shankar breaks decathlon National Record at Wieslaw Czapiewski Memorial
Since then he’s come close every time he’s competed in a decathlon but had never quite improved on his record mark. This hasn’t always been a problem. “At some meets like the Asian Games the point is to win a medal somehow. So there you compromise on how much you are pushing yourself in each event just so that you can return with a medal. I could probably have scored 7700 points at the Asian Games but I wanted to secure the medal in the final event (1500m) so I paced myself really conservatively,” he says.
Indeed Tejaswin had initially planned on pushing for the record at the Open Nationals in Chennai later this month. However that plan changed at the Asian Championships in Gumi, South Korea at the end of May.
‘ Feeling unsatisfied’
Although he had won a silver medal in Gumi, Tejaswin fell short once again of his national record. He felt something was off. “I felt as if something was missing. I hadn’t done all that I think I was capable of. And that’s something that I don’t like feeling. When I switched from the high jump (Tejaswin is also the national record holder in the high jump) to the decathlon, it was because I didn’t like the feeling I sometimes got competing in a single event that I could have done better. When you have 10 different events, there’s always a chance to put off a bad individual event and then do better in the next one. But I didn’t get that feeling in Gumi. I didn’t get the feeling that I had done all that I could do. That’s when I knew I had to compete again,” he says.
But while he was itching to compete at another decathlon, opportunities at the 10 sport event are limited, let alone one with the high quality field that would push him towards a new mark. “That’s when everything came together serendipitously,” says Tejaswin.
At the start of the year, he had started training with a Serbian athlete Darko Pesic in Novi Sad, Serbia. That connection saw him get in touch with a Serbian coach – Anatoly – who in turn knew the organisers of the Wiesław Czapiewski Memorial in Poland. Even as Tejaswin was contemplating where he could compete, his Serbian coach put in a word with the organisers.
“It was as if I was just walking and someone came up to me and said, here have 100 rupees. This sport is a very small community. Because I knew somebody who knew somebody, I was able to get an entry to a Gold Standard event,” he says.
Getting the chance to compete at a designated decathlon event was critical to his hopes of setting a new national record. “The advantage of taking part in a combined events only competition is that the officials are a lot more relaxed. In a regular competition, the schedule is a lot more elaborate. There are a lot of procedures to flow because there are multiple events happening at the same time. At the Wiesław Czapiewski Memorial though, when the high jump is going on, there’s just the high jump going on. I didn’t have to stop because a 1500m race was going on simultaneously. Moreover the officials want you to get a big score. So for example, what happens is assuming the wind is blowing from the north they might even change the direction of the race so that it helps the Athletes like they can make the most of a favourable wind. At the Federation Cup (In February where Tejaswin won gold with 7558 points), we only got one warm up throw in the discus because the officials had to conduct the 10000m race. But in Poland, we got 3 warm up throws. Here we decathletes were the center of attention,” he says.
Zero expectations
With all this in his favour, Tejaswin says he was perhaps the most relaxed he had ever been for a competition. “I could really just focus on what I had to do. I wasn’t thinking that I had to get the gold. It didn’t matter to me whether I came first or fourth. I had a personal target which was to do the best I could and apart from that I didn’t have any expectations on myself. For the first time that I can remember I slept a solid 8 hours in the night before my competition. Otherwise, before Korea, before Federation Cup, the Asian Games, all the time I’m sleeping maybe 3 or 4 hours maximum the night before because I’m so restless thinking about the various scenarios that could happen the next day. This time I just thought, lets see what happens. And everything went to plan,” he says.
Indeed at the Wiesław Czapiewski Memorial there were three events (100m, pole vault and the 1500m) in which Tejaswin equalled or improved on his previous best. It’s the results in the 400m (in which he got a season’s best) and the 1500m that he was most satisfied with. “The 400m was really significant because this season I’d run two races and both of them were 50 point something. I wasn’t even able to break 49 seconds and that needed me to do some reevaluation in the 8 weeks I had after the Asian Championships. I had been training on building up my lactic tolerance and instead I started to tap into my reserve speed system. When I got to my 400m race, I had the first lane which I feel is the worst because it forces me to look at all the other runners over the course of the race. But despite this, I clocked 48.8s which is very close to my all time best,” he says.
His performance in the 1500m comes in as a close second favourite. “Running the 1500m in the decathlon is not like running a regular 1500 because you are on really tired legs on day 2. But more than a physical struggle, it’s a mental challenge because at that point, at every step, your body wants to stop in the middle of the track. After the first lap, I was running with my eyes closed because I just wanted to finish my race. So I was really happy to overcome that and be able to run a personal best of 4.30,” he says.
8000 on the horizon
While he might have got the national record, what Tejaswin considers even more promising is that he can see the 8000 point milestone coming up ahead. That’s because while he might have met or improved his expectations for some events, there are several where Tejaswin feels he’s got a high ceiling to improve.
“The decathlon is a two day event and usually after the first day’s events (100m, long jump, high jump, shot put and 400m) I’m usually at around 4200 points and at my best I’ve done 4400 points (At the Jim Click Invitational in 2023). But I’m usually trying to not lose as many points on day 2 (110m hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin and 1500m). I’ve been scoring around 3200 or 3300 points on the second day. But over the course of these last couple of years I’ve slowly started improving my second days total. I actually had my best ever second day’s total this time (He scored 3530 points on his second day in Poland).
“The first day is about athletic ability but on the second day it’s about executing pure technique under extreme fatigue. I’m never worried about day one because I know I’m a phenomenal athlete. But the real challenge is on day 2 and I’m happy that over the last two years I’ve improved my second day’s performance by about 200 points. I know that if I can increase my second day’s total to even about 3800 points, and keep my first day between 4200 and 4400 points, I’ll be able to total 8100 points. Right now I’m jumping 4.10 in the pole vault. But that number can get to 4.50m. My discus throw can start going to 45m (it was 38.28m in Poland). My javelin can go to 60m (52.89m in Poland). I also threw 12.62m in the shot put which is probably the worst I’ve done even in training this year. My numbers are low right now because I only started this sport about three years back. Right now I’m about 150-200 points away from the 8000 point barrier. It’s not some impossible number,” he says.
Tejaswin’s already seeing the improvement coming through in the pole vault – which has always been his weakest event. Even though he equalled his personal best clearance of 4.10m, Tejaswin had hoped to jump far higher. “I was expecting a 4.20 or a 4.25m clearance. I’d even bought stiffer poles than the ones I was using last year because I could see in practise that I was capable of jumping higher. But now even these poles have started to feel a bit soft. I honestly think I can be jumping at least 4.40m which isn’t crazy for someone who is as tall as me and who has my kind of speed on the runway. Every 10 centimetre increase in height adds up to about 30 more points so I can gain about 100 points from the pole vault alone,” he says.
Planning big
If Tejaswin does start nudging the 8000m mark, he will be hoping to do so next year where there are plenty of high level competitions at which he will have to be at his best. “I feel I am on the right trajectory. 8000 points is probably the next goal for myself from this point on. Obviously if I can push the 8000 point mark, then I’ll be in a position to compete for a medal at the Commonwealth Games. The standard at that event is really high. Even in 2022, the fourth place finisher got 7700 points and we have the Olympic bronze medallist (Lindon Victor of Grenada) who are part of the field. But I really want to be the first Indian man to win medals in two separate field events,” says Tejaswin, who won a bronze in the men’s high jump at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Should he accomplish that goal, Tejaswin will begin to dream even bigger. “If all this happens and I do get to 8000 points, then I can aim for something even bigger in 2027 and get into a strong position going into Los Angeles in 2028,” he says.
All that’s for the future though. For now, Tejaswin’s got his hands full. He wants to rest and recover until his next competition for the season– which he thinks will be the Open National Championships in Chennai at the end of the month. But before that, there’s still his video to complete.
“Luckily I’ve got a really nice end for it,” he says.